The Storm King(77)

“At least he’s getting it out of his system,” Tom said. “He can’t get away with being so wild in the city.”

“Try telling him what he can’t do.”



“You already did. No Thunder Runs. No Night Ship. No more revenge.”

“He doesn’t need it anymore. You should thank me. Everyone knows you hated the whole thing.”

Drops pattered around them, but they were both already soaked. Light rain broke against glinting waves like sheets of static.

“He can be a lot,” Tom said tentatively.

“Too much. He’s too much all the time.” Lucy drew something across the splintered railing with the pad of her index finger. It could have been a heart. It might have been a question mark.

She shivered and pulled her kimono wrap tight around her shoulders. Her arms were still bare. She moved closer to Tom, and it was shocking to feel her skin against his.

He couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had been alone together. Her profile was softer in the moonlight. What appeared unassailable in the sober hours now looked fragile. She’d never let him close enough to see the craquelure of her true self.

Was this what Nate loved about her? Tom wondered. Was there something in the way she was flawed that made him feel whole? Did he think he was holding her together? Did they keep each other from shattering?

“You were angry in there,” she said. “I’ve never seen you like that. Wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”

“People are full of surprises.”

“Nate would say that.”

“I’m sorry, though—about what I said. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t apologize.” She turned around, leaning against the railing to face him. “You’ll ruin it. We’re all changing. We’re growing up. That’s a good thing.”

“Maybe I don’t want to change so much. I like things the way they are.”

“You should be able to call someone on being a bitch when she’s acting like one. You don’t have to be Mister Nice Guy all the time. People love Nate because he does what he wants. He’s himself, and no one else and nothing can stop him. Wouldn’t it be nice to stop worrying about what people think and do what you want? Just once?”



She cupped Tom between his legs with one manicured hand, and the breath went out of him. Her fingers kneaded his shorts and Tom seemed to look down upon himself from a great height.

She grabbed his hand and placed it on her right breast.

He held it there loosely, as if moving even a fingertip might rupture it.

“Squeeze it. Feel it,” she said.

He did. They were heavier than Emma’s, her nipple thick and hard. Nerve endings from his palm to his brain caught fire and blazed away.

She moved his other hand onto her other breast. “I’m beautiful, Tom.”

He knew this. It was undeniable.

She clenched him hard enough for him to jump. “Don’t you want it?”

“No.” His voice was only a breath louder than a whisper because he wasn’t sure. Maybe he did.

“You should,” she sighed into his ear.

Tom knew he had to pull away from her, but he couldn’t. “Nate,” he gasped. She was squeezing him so hard. “He would totally—”

“But this is all about Nate,” she said.

He didn’t understand.

She was close enough now that her lips grazed his ear. “Because being with me is the closest you’ll ever get to being with him.”

Tom took her words. He parsed and split and reassembled them into every meaning he could conjure. He stared at her smirking face. Her laughing eyes and her mocking lips. Hate soaked him like a plunge into ice water. He shuddered under the touch of this creature. This monster.

His hands were still on her breasts. Without thinking, he pushed her away with all of his strength.

She was through the railing and halfway to the water before either of them remembered to scream.





Fourteen

“I called for her. I screamed for her, but she didn’t answer. I ran down to the undercroft, opened the launch, and jumped in the water, but it was so dark I couldn’t see my own hands. I swam and dove for as long as I could but I couldn’t find her. I kept calling for her, but she must have hit her head against the pilings. I didn’t mean to. I swear to God I didn’t. But I know it doesn’t matter what I meant.”

Nate could not find words. The man in front of him looked like his Tom, but this didn’t make sense, because how could his Tom have killed Lucy?

Tom took his gun from its holster. The room was dark, and the pistol was a wedge of obsidian.

“I tried to do it before.” He looked at the gun cradled in his hand. “I thought about it so many times.”

“Tom.” All other words were still lost to him.

Tom dropped the weapon into Nate’s hand. In his palm it felt heavy and cold and alive.



“Do it, Nate. That’s why you came back here, wasn’t it? To find out who killed Lucy and make them pay? The equations of pain have to be balanced. Murder makes it easy math.”

Nate lagged behind the scene like thunder from distant lightning. He tried to see what Tom had seen. He tried to reconcile this with the countless ways in which he’d imagined their graduation night unrolling and with what he’d learned from the chief’s files. When Tom’s words filtered through the maelstrom of his mind in a way that he actually understood, he tossed the gun onto the couch like it was on fire. “I’m not going to kill you, Tom. Christ. What’s the matter with you?”